1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements in a functional carpet having piles arranged to form a cord-tone pattern, dilour-tone pattern, velour-tone pattern or the like pattern and whose surface is treated with a surface treatment agent including fluoroplastics as a main component to provide the carpet with water repellant, oil repellant and soil resistance, and more particularly to such a functional carpet suitable in use for an automotive vehicle.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It has been hitherto well known that a carpet is coated with a general fluoroplastics emulsion serving as a surface treatment agent in order to provide the carpet with water repellant, oil repellant, soil resistance and the like. In this case, fluorocarbon compounds constituting the fluoroplastics include a large amount of ones having side-chain and a large amount of ones having relatively high molecular weight, for example, ones having the number of carbon atoms not smaller than 16. Such fluorocarbon compounds enlarge the size of molecule and becomes very bulky thereby degrading permeation of the fluoroplastics emulsion from the piled surface to the inside of a base fabric of the carpet when the fluoroplastics emulsion is coated at the surface of the base fabric of the carpet. As a result, such a carpet coated with the fluoroplastics emulsion cannot exhibit a sufficient water repellency, oil repellency, soil resistance and the like.
Besides, concerning surface treatment agents containing fluoroplastics to be used for general woven fabrics, no sufficient consideration is made to the permeability of the surface treatment agents since such surface treatment agents are required to be adhered only to the surface of the woven fabric. Accordingly, if such surface treatment agents are used for bulky fabric such as nonwoven fabric, they are low in permeability and therefore cannot exhibit desired water repellency and soil resistance.
Furthermore, with the above-mentioned and other conventional techniques, adhesion or fixation of the fluoroplastics to fibers of the carpet base fabric is accomplished only by solidification of the emulsion on the surface of the carpet base fabric upon coating of the emulsion at the surface of the carpet base fabric. In such a case, bonding force of the fluoroplastics to the fibers is weak, and therefore the water repellency, oil repellency, soil resistance and the like are inferior in durability.
As appreciated from the above, even on the assumption that the conventional surface treatment agents are applied to a carpet for use in an automotive vehicle, it is difficult that the carpet exhibits sufficient water repellency, oil repellency, soil resistance and the like and a sufficient durability of such functions. Additionally, with the conventional adhesion or fixation manner of fluoroplastics, water repellency, oil repellency, soil resistance and the like are low in durability, and therefore it is required to improve the durability of such performances.